Are you on an AT&T “unlimited” plan? If you’re a heavy data user then prepare to get limited! AT&T has announced that it will start throttling customers with unlimited data plans starting October 1, 2011. The company claims that only “the top 5 percent of heaviest data users” will be affected. Here’s a clip from the press release:
Starting October 1, smartphone customers with unlimited data plans may experience reduced speeds once their usage in a billing cycle reaches the level that puts them among the top 5 percent of heaviest data users. These customers can still use unlimited data and their speeds will be restored with the start of the next billing cycle. Before you are affected, we will provide multiple notices, including a grace period.
The hilarious part is that AT&T threw in a line about how only an approved merger with T-Mobile can save the company from a “spectrum shortage”. That’s just dishonest.
I know that RPadholic slickyfats uses a ton of data on AT&T. If you’re an AT&T customer like him, are you considering switching to a different carrier in light of the company’s new policy? As mobile Internet services become more advance and require more data, are you concerned about things like bandwidth caps and data throttling? Or are you not going to worry about things until it becomes an issue for you?
Ah, telcos stifle our next gen of communications and commerce. My only hope is that whitespace data can seriously compete with them or some form of super compression shows itself.
As far as that 5% is concerned, bullshit. They don't release hard numbers so they could say 1% or 20%. They also are not defining thresholds for this on either the amount of data consumed and throttled to what? I wonder if this effectively lets unlimited folks out of their contracts?
I honestly would be fine with a cap around 10gb per month and $5 for overages. 2gb and $10 is too low. If I'm throttled, I'll go get a metered VZ plan or jump on Sprint
I'll stick with them until this becomes an issue.
I did use nearly 15Gb last month, we'll see how much they slow it down.
It's impressive that AT&T is embracing bandwidth caps for its home Internet services and bandwidth throttling for its wireless services while posting record-breaking earnings and whining about spectrum deficiency. AT&T has stockpiled more spectrum than any other U.S. carrier, but isn't spending the money to quickly deploy it.
Maddening isn't it? Come on white space!!